Robots have been laboring in production facilities for decades, performing their tasks with great precision. They do a million things faster, cheaper, and more reliably than humans. And they’ve replaced millions of human jobs. But this sort of automation isn’t a priority for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It’s interested in humanoid robots that that can blend in a little better. Hence the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge.
In total, 22 robots competed in the finals on June 5th and 6th in Pomona, California. Each had an hour to accomplish a series of tasks more or less autonomously, including driving a car, getting out of the car (not easy for a robot!), opening and walking through a door, turning a valve, walking up steps, etc. They maintained connectivity with their operators as they would during disaster conditions, which was the theme. Think Fukushima.
The team from the Humanoid Robot Research Center at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), of South Korea, won with an amazing guy (well, it looked like a guy), and was awarded $2 million in prize money. The robot can walk on its feet or kneel down and roll around, a nifty way to avoid the top-heavy balance problem. And it did great.
But for most part, humanoid robots are not ready yet to take away anyone’s job. They have a terribly hard time doing even the simplest things without falling over unceremoniously. So one day they might succeed in performing more complex tasks in dangerous environments, but not today, and not tomorrow. But they do look funny when they fall over:
Oh no! We spoke too soon.
Here’s Carnegie Mellon’s Chimp robot that too fell down trying to get through the door, but after 5 minutes of bizarre contortions, it got back on its tracked feet. Amazing.
The Winning Guy
And here’s the winner from KAIST in South Korea, breezing right through some of the tasks:
Pretty slick.
But now there’s a problem that is getting worse by the day, one that we as society cannot deal with easily by simply removing people from the labor force. The problem isn’t really a problem. It’s a solution to a problem. We’re proud of it. It speaks of the greatness of the human mind and is testament to its true genius: automation, bots, algos… are replacing human brain power. Read… The Structural Jobs Fiasco No One Knows How to Deal with
Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:
Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.
The roles envisioned for robots are highly specialized. There is no market for a robot that can drive a car, compose a song, and play first base. There is a huge market for automated car washing, factory assembly lines, warehouse management, crop management, restaurant and burger flipping.
I don’t see humanoid robots existing in a Capitalist system. Once we have machines that can do all the jobs from serving us food to building us houses there will be no more competition as human labor will no longer make sense. While a robot slave would probably take less than a year to be built and trained a human laborer takes 20-30 and has a lot more needs. The laborer will be completely obsolete. We can have machines that build machines that build other machines who’s sole purpose is to… build more machines. There will be no end to it. The production capacity will increase exponentially and we will have more than enough to go around. A completely new economic system will have to be used.
Artificial Intelligence sounds good but it doesn’t exist. If you can get a machine to do one task really well that is just automation not intelligence. A computer still doesn’t have the cognitive skills of a baby or even a puppy.
And remember folks, we want are cars driven by these things because they are perfect and there will be no accidents.